Next Events (2026):
Winter Session : Social (In)justice, Indigeneity and Colonialingualism: Recognition, Resistance and Re-Existence
February 26-27, 2026 . Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark (in collaboration with the Department of Government, Uppsala University)
Call for participation
Focus- Intra-European colonial histories/linguistic nationalism, the Nordic colonial legacies and the Sámi/de-centering dominant narratives of North-South polarity. Further to explore points of convergence between the North-South, South- South, paving way for transversal exchanges.
Framing Question– To what extent can multilingual interactions in the Nordic regions disrupt linguistic hierarchies rooted in colonial legacies and reshape dominant language ideologies? How do these disruptions inter-act with the multilingual societies elsewhere such as South Asia, South Africa, Chile and Colombia, and processes of vernacularisation set in motion with respect to colonisation in some cases.
Rationale
Colonial languages carry colonial legacies and can perpetuate an imperialistic and neoliberal worldview. Languages can be disembodied from place and commodified as mere “resources”, important only for economic “value” rather than cultural importance, in a global, neoliberal framework. Privileging dominant colonial knowledge, languages, and neoliberal valorizations of diversity is colonial-lingualism- a practice that upholds colonial legacies, imperial mindsets, and inequitable practices (Meighan 2023). For instance, in Sweden, the opportunities to develop language competence and literacy often overlook the socio-economic and political challenges faced by multilingual communities. Beyond Swedish, the country is home to both minority and immigrant languages that embody its linguistic diversity. In Greenland, the systemic procedures of Danification post World War II have marginalised indigenous linguistic-cultural paradigms. In order to resist these colonial entanglements, the contemporary government has affirmed its commitment to “strengthen Greenlandic language teaching and to work towards replacing Danish with English as the first foreign language in the national education framework” (Jacobsen 2023, 30). Alternatively, in South Africa and Colombia, despite the government’s support for indigenous languages and cultures, the language policies tend to promote assimilation, falling short of addressing the power relations embedded in the use of English, Afrikaans, and Spanish respectively (Guzula 2022, Gutierrez and Epinayu 2024). Similarly in Chile, the struggle lies in fostering linguacultural awareness so as to resist the (re)introduction of colonial epistemologies and practices. This involves recognising Indigenous languages and knowledges—such as Mapuzugún—not as peripheral to national identity, but as central to contesting the epistemic erasures produced by coloniality. In comparison, in nations like India, where English has been absorbed as a new vernacular, the question of language remains fraught with layers of privilege and contested politics of participation (Zaidi and Harder 2024). The recent debates around the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also exemplify this tension.
Thus, it is important to problematise and challenge the dominant epistemic paradigm prevalent in the global north and the postcolonial nations of the global south which has systemically promoted assimilationist narratives vis-a-vis colonial cultures and language ideologies. These linguistic policies often propound a one-nation-one language paradigm whereby indigenous, regional and non standard contexts of a diverse linguistic habitus get marginalised. More to the point, the attempt to decolonise the colonial language paradigm often leads to the creation of certain dominant vernaculars that become instruments of territorial and political alignment, subsuming local speech forms in the process (Harder, Zaidi and Tschacher 2024).
Considering this, the symposium aims to explore the applicability of decolonial thought to Nordic indigenous contexts, enriching and nuancing these perspectives through the voices of Sámi, Greenlandic Inuit, other indigenous communities, and heritage language speakers. It also invokes indigenous articulations of everyday language forms in erstwhile colonies like India, South Africa and Colombia to develop a comparative insight on colonial and decolonial thought through language. A central aspect of social justice and equitability is language and how individuals choose to use their multilingual competencies. Languages, particularly heritage languages, mediate culture, habits and knowledge. The marginalisation of heritage language could imply a partial loss of knowledge, history and culture at the same time as a dominant language gains a public platform. Attending to epistemic justice necessitates decolonising and democratising knowledge – dislodging it from its current singular rendition in favour of plural, situated knowledge(s). Such a shift resists epistemic hegemony, wherein one regime of knowing arrogates authority over others, and instead foregrounds epistemic plurality as a condition of justice (Tlostanova et al 2019). This is particularly relevant when one needs to hear those who are unheard- those who are spoken about but not spoken to. We welcome expressions of interest in areas related to indigeneity, social (injustice), and linguicide from the perspectives of decolonial and epistemic justice (but not limited to):
- Languages as sites of identity and knowledge making.
- Reading literature as decolonising languages.
- Democratising English as a vernacular language.
- Indigenous languages and their pluriversal contexts.
- Multiliteracies and Translanguaging as instruments of decolonial resistance.
Submission Guidelines
Please submit abstracts (no more than 500 words) along with a title for the proposed presentation and boinote (100 words) to decolonialstudycircle@gmail.com
The last date of proposal submission is 21st November 2025.
We will notify you of the outcome of your submission by 30th November 2025.
Presenters are welcome to experiment with the format of the presentation, in terms of paper presentation and/ or creative responses in terms of performative, academic, and pedagogical responses to linguistic pluralism in a decolonial context.
The standard participation fee is 75 EUR per participant with institutional funding, and 50 EUR without institutional funding. If you are based outside Europe and therefore may not be able to travel to Denmark, you are welcome to present online. Online participants are asked to pay the NSU membership fee of 30 Euros. .
We understand that financial constraints can be a barrier, and we strongly encourage you to reach out to us if this is the case. Fee waivers are available for prospective presenters from low- and middle-income countries—just share your situation when submitting your abstract. Our study circle is committed to inclusivity and values participants from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds. We especially welcome young scholars, recognising the challenges of attending international events, and we want to make participation possible for everyone who wishes to contribute.
Works Cited
Gutiérrez, Claudia Patricia and Estefanía Frías Epinayú. “ Coloniality in language and education policies and the sustenance of Indigenous languages in the Global South: The case of the Wayuu people in Colombia. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 273-290, DOI: 10.1080/15505170.2024.2373132
Guzula, Xolisa. “De/coloniality in South African Language in Education Policy: Resisting Marginalisation of African Language Speaking Children.” Decoloniality, Language and Literacy: Conversation with Teacher Educators, edited by Carolyn McKinney and Pam Christie, Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2022, pp. 23-45.
Harder, Hans, Nishat Zaidi and Torsten Tschacher. The Vernacular: Three Essays on an Ambivalent Concept and its Uses in South Asia. Routledge, 2024.
Jacobsen, Ushma Chauhan. “The Entanglements of English in Contemporary Greenland.” Études Inuit Studies, vol. 47, no. 1/2, 2023, pp. 19–40. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27345296. Accessed 12 Sept. 2025.
Meighan, J. Paul. “ Colonialingualism: Colonial legacies, imperial mindsets, and inequitable practices in English language education.” Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, vol 17, no. 2, 2023, pp.146-155
Tlostanova, Madina., Thapar-Björkert, Suruchi., & Knobblock, Ina. “ Do we need decolonial feminism in Sweden?.” NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 27, no. 4, 2019. pp. 290-295.
Zaidi, Nishat and Hans Harder. Language Ideologies and the Vernacular in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia. Routledge, 2024.
Summer Session “(topic to be announced by 15 January 2026)”
July 2026, Latvia
About Study Circle 3: “Re-configuring Colonialities: Reforging Knowledges, Healing Trauma and Re-Imagining (Digital) Futures”
Study circle 3 will critically examine the entanglements of colonial histories, embodied trauma, and the contested terrain of technological and digital futures. Spanning across the Nordic-Baltic region, and extending to India, South Africa, and Columbia, we ask: How do colonial epistemologies and extractive histories continue to shape bodies, environments, and the very infrastructures of knowledge, care, and technological design? What does it mean to decolonize not only the archive and the university, but also the interface, algorithm, and avatar? We approach trauma not solely as a legacy of violence but as a living, embodied force—inscribed in land, memory, and digital ecologies. From intergenerational silence to algorithmic bias, trauma migrates and mutates, often becoming obscured in systems that are perceived as neutral.
Context of Study Circle 3 :
The study circle will attempt to establish dialogues between the Nordic-Baltic region and the global southern contexts of India, South Africa and Columbia, using the Dusselian (2012) frame of inter-cultural dialogues that implies movement “from the periphery to the periphery” (20) Importantly, this circle understands the Nordic-Baltic region not only as part of the Western world entering into dialogue with the Global South, but also as a landscape marked by its own entangled colonialities, cultural diversity, and situated knowledge systems. We do not see warzones as separate or outside these dialogues, but rather as deeply connected through intersecting histories of violence, resistance, and survival. Within these regions, indigenous communities and rich folk traditions hold forms of ancestral knowledge that, when brought into conversation with non-Western perspectives and decolonial practices, reveal shared ecological and epistemological roots. Rather than treating knowledge as traveling in one direction, this study circle seeks to illuminate how reciprocal exchange between indigenous and folk practices—across both Northern and Southern contexts—can nourish a deeper, planetary understanding of healing, resistance, and transformation.
Central Questions for discussions
While trauma is often framed through policy or therapy, and environmental crises through activism and sustainability, the body and the environment are still rarely understood as co-suffering, co-healing entities—mutually shaped by histories of racial capitalism, extraction, displacement, and erasure. In this context, we understand war, conflict, and displacement as not simply geopolitical or external, rooted in competing political interests, but also as social and internal: seen in the fragmentation of communities, the polarization of public discourse, and the deeply personal struggle to reconcile past trauma with present realities.
Healing, in this sense, does not lie in treating them in isolation, but in recognising their interdependence—at the connecting points among personal, social, political and ecological. In this light, public space can be reclaimed as a site of solidarity and collective healing, amplifying knowledges often excluded from the dominant narratives. We center practices that hold space for grief, resistance, ritual, and imagination, especially in marginalized communities that are actively reconfiguring themselves across borders, timelines, and digital realms. As we navigate the crises of war, climate collapse, and epistemic violence, we seek to understand what kinds of collective futures become possible when we begin from the body, from memory, and from acts of refusal and solidarity. Through these lenses, we explore how decolonial practices can create pathways for healing, resistance, and transformation.
We further argue that these entangled colonialities across the Nordic-Baltic states are deeply entwined with the global southern decolonial discourse, comprising an active terrain where the afterlives of empire—Scandinavian, Soviet, and Russian—continue to shape identities, ecologies, and public narratives. By so doing, this study circle reimagines the North/South polarity not just geopolitically but also emotionally and ecologically, highlighting “internal Souths” within the region itself: from Sámi territories to industrial ghostlands and ecologically devastated shorelines.
Coordinators
Bharti Arora, Nishat Zaidi, Mary Marinopoulou, and Suruchi Thapar Björkert
